Truth Conquers All

Tag Archives: Grover Norquist

The GOP can be proud of one thing. They have been successful in keeping government small in one major respect:

THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT ONE THING TO HELP ME MAINTAIN MY SANITY!!!

Oh, I know. I said it yesterday. Did we actually expect the “Super Mario Dingbats” to come up with a deal?

Hell no.

Why?

Because although Democrats continue to offer real sacrifices when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, Republicans will not consider raising any revenue. Now a few of them claim they want to, and no doubt some of them are sincere. Until.

Until John Boehner tells them that there is not a chance in HELL that he can push through even a 1 ¢ increase in taxes on the mega-rich puppeteers who control all of them. And the head puppeteer is the smarmy-grinning Grover Norquist who happily threatens anyone who dare withdraw from his “no tax pledge” that he will have them primaried.

And the beat goes on. Republicans who still retain some vestige of sanity (almost all of whom are not presently in elected positions) admit that revenue must be part of the package. They admit that Norquist, who hold no elected position has an insane amount of power and strangle-hold on the Party. A few brave souls have withdrawn from his “pledge” and will face his wrath.

It seems that the prudent thing to do, is for GOP politicos who face re-election in 2012, to do this:

Schedule a 15-minute spot on their district or states local station.

Lay out the reasons with expert opinions why they think it necessary to add taxes on the 1% to the mix to solve our problems.

Invite constituents to write, phone, or e-mail their opinion.

Indicate that you will publish the results after 60 days in the local newspapers.

Promise to abide by the results.

In other words, actually do the will of your constituency. Norquist makes his threats based on an assumption that every voter voted on one issue only–the non-raising of taxes. I doubt seriously that this is true. And more importantly, I suspect they are thinking of their own taxes, not those of corporate America nor those of the filthy rich.

I’m tired of this nonsense.

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Meanwhile, . . .

While we are at it, I’m sick of Newt Gingrich and his stupidity. Now he wants to eliminate child labor laws, since “every really successful person he has ever know started working when they were 11 or 12.” Yeah. Let’s put them back in the mines Newt, you lousy excuse for a human being.

While we are at it, I’m sick of Mittens Romney. He has now lowered himself to the ranks of Sean Hannity. It’s cut and paste time for Mittens with his new ad, wherein he has Obama appear to say that “if we talk about the economy we are going to lose.” Actually what he said is “JOHN MCCAIN’S CAMPAIGN SAYS IF WE TALK ABOUT THE ECONOMY WE ARE GOING TO LOSE.” (From the 2008 campaign.)

Mittens must be feeling desperate.

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The majors and their police forces who have moved against the OWS folks, forcibly and with extreme measures in some cases, are likely to encourage more folks in the US to support the movement in my opinion. Some disagree, and think that people will be dissuaded from entering the movement out of fear of injury or arrest.

I think that when we see the results of unbridled police attacks against quiet, peaceful, sitting demonstrators, it actually encourages people to get involved to support them.

One has only to look at the Middle East. The more vicious the attacks on Syrians and now Egyptians, the stronger and larger the commitment to oppose brutal attacks.

How can Americans duck into their homes out of fear of pepper sprays and arrest, when people in other parts of the world are laying down their very lives to support freedom and equality within their governments?

Could we stand the shame?

Can we accept the only conclusion then that we may talk a fine game, but in the end, we have become soft and compliant in our own demise?

Can we stand the shame?

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Michele Bachmann suggests that if we allow marriage equality, the next thing that is sure to occur is that people will marry objects. Yeah know what? In the grand scheme of things, I don’t really care. I wish them all the happiness in the world. To grab a phrase that belongs to a certain Wasilla Mama, “that woman is an idiot.”

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Paul Krugman has this great line about Grifter Newt:

“he’s a stupid man’s idea of what a smart man sounds like.”

h/t to Juanita Jean.

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One of the stunning oddities of the extreme right is their double take on the President of the United States. On the one hand, he is rather stupid, unable to formulate a sentence without a teleprompter in front of him. They also seriously question whether he ever attended either Columbia or Harvard, reminding you that “nobody remembers ever seeing him.”

On the other hand, they tell you that this stupid man, who doesn’t understand economics, foreign policy, or the American people, is at the apex of a decades-long conspiracy to destroy America and replace it with an Islamic state. And to make it worse, things are so far along that Americans must act “immediately” lest we lose any more of our “freedoms” because Barry, (as they call him) is about ready to suspend the Constitution and declare himself “dictator for life.”

Now both of these can’t be true.

Yet, true to the fundamentalist mind, it is true for them, since wildly in opposite conclusions are simply compartmentalized in different parts of the mind, and never allowed to confront each other.

And that’s the truth, so help me God.

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Got your bread drying out? Got the bird ready for a drink? Or are you feeding off a relative this Thursday? Lucky you. Tomorrow will be brutal with a pie, dressing, a salad, and a side to get done. All for a meal that will last about 20 minutes. It is a crying shame to spend all this time! But I love it.

The name Grover Norquist is a lot like that of Orly Taitz, you figure it’s a symbolic cultural name, like Kilroy, and can’t possibly be a real person.

Unfortunately, in the case of Norquist, he is all too real. He’s got decent creds, a BA and MBA from Harvard, and he’s put in the time to learn his conservative ways. And he owns the Republican party pretty much.

How he came to do that is not my concern here. Suffice to say, he’s managed to get the pledge-hungry GOP to sign off in overwhelming numbers not to raise taxes under any, and I do mean any, circumstances.

He appeared on Chris Matthews yesterday, and as I listened to him twisting this whole debt crisis to a “we have no choice but resist the intransigence of the President and his obsession with raising taxes.” Chris managed to elicit from Grover what all already know, “NO TAXES EVER FOR ANY REASON.” When Matthews points out that the GOP was offered a 3-to-1 deal of $3 of spending cuts for $1 of revenue, Grover, replied with what has become a GOP mantra: Tip your head to the side, look confused, and then offer:

Why on earth would you raise taxes when we have a spending problem?

Over and over in the weeks and months that have led us to the edge of the abyss, we hear that phrase. We have a spending problem. This is often coupled with “everyone knows that you don’t raise taxes when you are in a recession.” I guess somebody ought to have told “near-God Ronald Reagan that fact, for he surely did just that.

In any event, my focus is on the notion that “we have a spending problem.”

I realized that this claim was almost always going unchallenged. The proper response to this nonsense is to ask: “Why do we have a spending problem?” And you can expect that the answer will be: “Because we have a 14 trillion-dollar deficit. Duh!”

Sounds right doesn’t it? If you are in debt, you might well conclude that you have spent too much. And perhaps you have. Or perhaps you really haven’t.

Look, quite simply there is no rule that says that a deficit means that you have spent too much. It simply means that spending out-paces revenue. There are two ways to address that deficit. As purists, one can address it from either the spending or the revenue side, OR, anything in between.

The Republicans are fond of likening the woes of the federal budget to that of an American family budget. And they argue, that if you are in debt, the family sits down and starts looking for ways to cut its spending. Entertainment expenses are curtailed, fewer clothing purchases are made, cheaper food is eaten.

That is their analogy and they leave it at that. But is that the only solution?

Of course not. Members of the family can take on part-time jobs, or look for higher paying jobs. They might decide to spend even more (an example of spending oneself out of debt) to seek additional training that might garner a bigger pay check in the long term.

Yet the GOP has decided that this way (increasing revenue) or spending to improve one’s salability if you will, is not allowed. No reason why, just not allowed.

But indeed there is a reason. Just one they don’t want to exactly advertise.

When social security was passed decades ago, the Republicans were against it, and have continued over the ensuing years to limit it, cut it, and otherwise damage it. They ideologically have no interest in government safety nets. The same is the case with Medicare and Medicaid. The same is true of welfare in any form, whether it be food stamps or meals for poor kids at school. They are not interested in helping poor kids get to college. They are not interested in anything that purports to be a government handout to those who have not earned the reward, as they believe they have.

By insisting on a “spending cuts only” solution to the debt problem, they insure that deep and destructive cuts will occur in all social safety net programs. It is their true plan. The Republican party has become (arguably it almost always has been) the party of business. In their view government is in place for only two things: provide for the common safety from aggressive nations, and ensure through legislation that business is unfettered and allowed to operate without restraint.

Government can thus fiddle with international trading to ensure that American businesses are competitive in foreign markets to the degree that they wish. It can ensure that no state interfere in a way that creates a road block to profit.

History of course shows how this all plays out. Unrestrained free markets lead inevitably to slave wages, unsafe working conditions, and a growing underclass of near serfdom, all the while the gilded rich, who shrink to smaller numbers, live in wealth so great as to be obscene. Corporations erect cheap housing and company stores. Every dime made by the worker goes to pay for housing and food. Life for most grows mean and ugly.

This is what always happens when business is allowed to proceed unregulated. The pursuit of profit is the only goal. As Gecko said, “greed is good.”

It’s only a “spending problem” if you vision the world from Norquist land.

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